Hundreds of N.Y. teachers were fired during '50s red scare

Yesterday's Times, "When Suspicion of Teachers Ran Unchecked in New York" tells the story of McCarthy-period witch hunts in the N.Y. City public school system"

Outside the written record, Ms. Harbatkin did discover unexpected moments of humanity. The Board of Education was often reluctant to oust a husband and wife when both were teachers, and her mother, who died in 2003, confided to her that after she told Mr. Moskoff she would never sleep again if she provided or verified the names of fellow teachers, he turned off his tape recorder “and told her to keep saying she didn’t remember the names.”

She was not charged and continued teaching into the 1970s.